{"id":866393,"date":"2026-07-15T14:09:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T12:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=866393"},"modified":"2026-07-15T14:09:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T12:09:34","slug":"top-engineers-issue-a-warning-about-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/866393\/top-engineers-issue-a-warning-about-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Top engineers issue a warning about South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa has moved beyond isolated infrastructure failures and is now facing a systemic breakdown driven by governance failures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the warning from the South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE), which represents around 15,000 industry professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes approximately 7,500 to 8,000 registered as active, paying members. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its database includes a broader mix of engineers, technologists, technicians, and students across 19 regional branches and 11 technical divisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking in an interview with Moneyweb Radio<\/a>, Sekadi Phayane-Shakhane, CEO of SAICE, said that all the research and government reports have shown that “we are beyond a critical state”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said that while the country’s deteriorating water, sanitation, and electricity infrastructure reflects technical failures, the root cause lies in how municipalities are governed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“As much as these are technical failures from an infrastructure perspective, it’s also a governance architecture that ensures that these technical failures keep happening,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Phayane-Shakhane, municipalities retain responsibility for critical services such as water, sanitation, and electricity under the current constitutional framework, even when they lack the technical capacity to deliver them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Fundamentally, governance problems come with engineering consequences. Municipalities hold all the protected mandates for water, for sanitation and electricity, even when they lack the technical capacity to deliver them,” she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She argued that the current system effectively protects failing institutions instead of safeguarding residents’ rights to reliable basic services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phayane-Shakhane said South Africa has reached the point where municipalities that cannot manage essential infrastructure should lose those responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She explained that when municipalities cannot properly operate water infrastructure due to a lack of required technical expertise, those responsibilities should be transferred elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The ability to reassign functions like water reticulation when a municipality is not coping, and they don’t have the correct technical team to ensure that they can deliver these, should be taken away from them,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added that municipalities should begin losing these functions, with responsibilities reassigned to entities capable of maintaining infrastructure and ensuring consistent service delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Retired engineers are willing to teach <\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Sekadi Phayane-Shakhane, CEO of SAICE.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Phayane-Shakhane also called for professionally registered engineers and technologists to occupy senior technical positions in municipalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Senior technical roles in municipalities must be filled by professionally registered engineers and technologists,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She argued that professional registration creates personal accountability because engineers answer to regulatory bodies such as the Engineering Council of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When you are professionally registered, you are personally accountable for infrastructure decisions, and there’s someone who holds you responsible, which is your regulator,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She added that new regulations requiring engineering work to be undertaken by professionally registered practitioners would help improve governance and service delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phayane-Shakhane also backed longer terms for municipal managers, provided they are accompanied by stronger consequence management and performance monitoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She argued that longer appointments would allow municipal leaders to focus on long-term infrastructure programmes instead of annual projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She cited the City of Cape Town’s five- to ten-year infrastructure planning as an example of the benefits of long-term leadership, and said extended terms should be tied to measurable infrastructure outcomes and regular performance reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addressing concerns over thousands of vacancies in municipal water departments, Phayane-Shakhane said rebuilding technical capacity would take time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, she added that the engineering profession is working to strengthen the pipeline through mentoring and professional development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said retired engineers are willing to mentor younger professionals, while efforts are underway to help more engineers complete professional registration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I don’t think the turnaround will happen in the next two or three years, but if the infrastructure or the frameworks are put in place, then in the next five to 10 years we can see a turnaround in terms of service delivery within our municipalities,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This problem did not happen two years ago. It’s taken like 10 to 15 years of dysfunction for us to get to where we are now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa has moved beyond isolated infrastructure failures and is now facing a systemic breakdown driven by governance failures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":866401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"posted","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"2077365043688054930","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[853,25829],"class_list":["post-866393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-south-africa","tag-south-african-institution-of-civil-engineering-saice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866393"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866405,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866393\/revisions\/866405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}